Fairfield Police say website fell victim to series of 'cyberattacks'

A screen shot of the Newark City Hall website after it was hacked by an affiliate of Anonymous in 2012. The hacker's collective may be responsible for a series of cyberattacks that destroyed the Fairfield Police Department's website earlier this month.

FAIRFIELD — A series of cyberattacks has led to the destruction of the Fairfield Police Department's website, police officials said today.

The department's website was attacked three times stretching back to December, and the most recent attack succeeded in destroying several files on the server, leading officials to take the website down, Chief Charles Voelker said today.

“This appears to have been a cyberattack that was directed specifically at a government agency,” Voelker said in a statement. “We are working at trying to restore the site as quickly as possible and are asking the public to be patient as we do so."

The cyberattack is being investigated by the N.J. State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security and the Essex County Prosecutor's Office, according to Deputy Chief Anthony Manna, a department spokesman.

The website is interactive, so the department was hosting it on an outside server through a private contractor, Manna said. He said because the website was not hosted on the department's internal server, hackers could not access departmental files.

Investigators have yet to identify the hackers, but some evidence suggests the group known as Anonymous was behind the attack, Manna said. The group left its trademark Guy Fawkes masks, popularized by the movie "V for Vendetta," on pages of the website, according to Manna.

It appears the hackers infiltrated the website on three consecutive weekends, according to Manna, who said they were most likely searching for valuable files. When they found nothing of use, they likely left a "time bomb" behind that eventually destroyed the site, he said.

Voelker described the site as an important hub where Fairfield residents are able to quickly obtain information about the department, traffic conditions and criminal activity in the town. The town is working to get the website back online as quickly as possible, he said.

This isn't the first time an Essex County government website has fallen victim to a cyberattack. Last February, an affiliate of Anonymous hijacked a section of the Newark City Hall dedicated to the municipal council and used a city e-mail list server to send out messages.

Anonymous, perhaps best known for its long-standing and public feud with the Church of Scientology, is a hacker's collective that claims its mission is to expose and curb government corruption and police brutality while promoting technological freedom.